To diagnose if you are suffering from insomnia or not, your doctor will check your medical history and obtain the detail of your sleep habits such as:
- Whether you find it difficult to fall asleep at the beginning, or you wake up often, or you wake up again soon after falling asleep and cannot get back to sleep again.
- The duration and frequency of your insomnia, sleep pattern, the time you go to bed and the time you get up, and how many times you wake up during the night.
- The symptoms that have occurred during your sleep, activities before you go to bed, your bedroom’s atmosphere along with your bedding gear, and the environment at home.
- Activities and daytime sleepiness.
- History of congenital disease, medication and addictions, as well as family history.
In addition, the doctor will require a thorough physical examination, especially of your nervous system to see if it has any problem. If there is a clear indication that your insomnia is due to the nervous system or related types of other ailment, or if it is a complication from another illness, your doctor will recommend further tests in order to determine the root cause; and this will vary from case to case.
Once completed, your doctor will be able to prescribe an appropriate treatment. For example, if the cause is due to Anxiety Disorder, the doctor will emphasize the treatment on the anxiety disorder together with a change to the sleep environment. However, if the cause of the insomnia is still unclear, the doctor will need to further evaluate the severity of the condition before deriving a course of action.
